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Ode / Arthur O'Shaughnessy
Ode is a poem written in 1874 by English poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy. It is often referred to by its first line We are the music makers. Ode We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world's great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire's glory: One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure Can trample an empire down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth. A breath of our inspiration Is the life of each generation; A wondrous thing of our dreaming Unearthly, impossible seeming The soldier, the king, and the peasant Are working together in one, Till our dream shall become their present, And their work in the world be done. They had no vision amazing Of the goodly house they are raising ; They had no divine foreshowing Of the land to which they are going : But on one man's soul it hath broken, A light that doth not depart ; And his look, or a word he hath spoken, Wrought flame in another man's heart. And therefore to-day is thrilling With a past day's late fulfilling ; And the multitudes are enlisted In the faith that their fathers resisted, And, scorning the dream of to-morrow, Are bringing to pass, as they may, In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, The dream that was scorned yesterday. But we, with our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see, Our souls with high music ringing: O men! it must ever be That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. For we are afar with the dawning And the suns that are not yet high, And out of the infinite morning Intrepid you hear us cry How, spite of your human scorning, Once more God's future draws nigb, And already goes forth the warning That ye of the past must die. Great hail! we cry to the comers From the dazzling unknown shore ; Bring us hither your sun and your summers, And renew our world as of yore ; You shall teach us your song's new numbers, And things that we dreamed not before: Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more. About The Ode is the first poem in O'Shaughnessy's 1874 collection, Music and Moonlight. It has 9 stanzas, although it is commonly believed to be only 3 stanzas long. The phrase "movers and shakers" originates here. The words have inspired many people and have been admired by many poets, including W.B. Yeats Recognition The first 3 stanzas of "Ode" were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900."Ode". Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor, Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 6, 2012. The poem has been set to music, or alluded to, many times: * Edward Elgar's The Music Makers, Op. 69, uses the entire poem. * The Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály also made a setting for and dedicated to Merton College, Oxford on the occasion of its 700th anniversary in 1964. * English folk singer Vikki Clayton set the first three stanzas as the title track from her 1997 album 'Movers and Shakers'. http://www.vikkiclayton.co.uk/albums.htm In popular culture *In the feature film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, after Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) states that "The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!", Veruca Salt responds in an arrogant tone, "Snozzberries? Who ever heard of a snozzberry?". Willy Wonka grabs her mouth and replies, "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." **A sample of Willy Wonka's line appears at the beginning of Bassnectar's album "Motions of Mutation." **The track "Nephatiti" from 808 State's album Ex:el uses a sample of Willy Wonka saying "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." **The track "Dream Makers" by Kuffdam & Plant uses a sample of Willy Wonka saying "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." **The introduction of the song "Nothing Less (Ft. Slug)" by the rap group Living Legends begins with the sample of Willy Wonka. **The Aphex Twin track "We Are the Music Makers" from Selected Ambient Works 85-92 begins with a sample of Willy Wonka. It is repeated a number of times throughout the track. **Echolyn's 1992 song "A Little Nonsense" contains a sample of Wonka saying the phrase. The song's title also references another quote which Wonka sings, "A little nonsense now and then / Is relished by the wisest men." *The first stanza is quoted in the animated TV show American Dad on Season 5, Episode 6. *DJ Zinc's track "Music Makers" repeats this phrase throughout the song. *Joy Electric's 1996 album We Are the Music Makers is a reference to the first line. *The track "Movers And Shakers" by Eden Burning begins with a setting of the first stanza of "Ode". *The track "Reflector" on the album Geräuschinformatik by Autoaggression contains the entire first stanza of "Ode" and part of the final stanza. *The phrase "movers and shakers" commonly used in the realms of business and politics to describe a person who is highly influential within their field (phrase began to gain currency around 1972) was borrowed from this poem. *The track "Music Makers" by ILS the track starts off with "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." *The first stanza of the ode is printed in the front of The Music Makers, a novel by E. V. Thompson, set in Ireland. *"Ode" is quoted at the end of the movie Last Summer in the Hamptons (1995). *The line "We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams" is quoted in the song "Jenny and Her Vega Machine" from the John McGurgan album Gipsy Street. The line is also adapted later within the song to "We make the music makers, we make the dreamers out of those dreams". *The initial verse is used at the start of the Raymond E. Feist novel Rage of a Demon King. *In the Hollywood party scene in Stephen Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along, the character Mary sardonically surveys the other guests and comments "These are the movers / These are the shapers / These are the people / That fill the papers." *The poem is used in the introduction of Elizabeth Hayden's book The Assassin King. *Lines from the first stanza were used in advertisements for the Dell Studio line of notebook PCs. *The song "Dreamers of Dreamz" by D-Block & S-Te-Fan contains "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." * The opening line has been incorporated into the name of the New York band We Are the Music Makers, and the Singaporean Orchestra of the Music Makers. * the line "We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams" is quoted in the song "Shapeshifters" from the The apparitions album "as this is futuristic". *Balance 019, a progressive techno release mixed by Henry Saiz opens with two paragraphs of this poem. References External links ;Audio / video *"Ode" at YouTube Category:Text of Poem Category:English poems Category:19th-century poems